Learning to love career mode?

[MajorPrankster]

For me, career mode _is_ BT.

While I did play the campaign a couple times before career mode existed, campaigns force me to play someone elses story.
I want to play my own stories.

I don't look at scores, how long it takes to get places, what items are in which shops, etc.

Out of choice, I create a group of 'mech warriors and see how long they can survive, until I don't feel like playing BT anymore.
I cannot count the number of merc groups that have died in this process.

For my preference, the career mode is the game, the campaign is just a tutorial.

Therefore, the more rules added, like UW, the more I will enjoy the game.
Adding more and more of the 'rules' just creates more varied stories, IMO.
Mods are helpful here, but IME mods for most all games are typically 'amateur hour' and I prefer more vetted additions.

In my view, BT is just having a TT I can play anytime.

 

[HBS_HighCommand]

@ThatGuyMontag Put the idea in the suggestions forum here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?forums/battletech-suggestions.997/ I'm not sure how much work it'll be but it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask for it. It's probably too late for this to sneak into 1.6.

It's absolutely too late.

 

[Yeach]

Play with stock mechs only
Play with mechs that have structure damage and destroyed weapons.

That’s more fun and IMO gives a more gritty Battletech play through.

 

[Rabain]

Yeah I think the thing with Career Mode is that unless you are aiming at trying to get as many points as possible then you need to pick a set of Options that place some other challenge in your way. The base game default settings make the game too easy in my opinion.

I started several Career Modes with great plans and they just fizzled out until I realised there was no challenge. So I chose a harder setting, pieces of 5 mech parts and edited the game files to start with only 1 heavy mech, a Thunderbolt.

This completely revitalised Career Mode for me. Suddenly every battle was a challenge, there were several ingame months where I could barely pay the bills. I didn't get a full set of heavies until day 700+. It hurt in all the right places, it was great. The only negative I'd put with doing that is that most of the Flashpoints will be beyond your ability for a very long time making FP seem pointless, I'd rather if they scaled up/down a little bit based on their current settings so you could try them earlier and not be crushed (with a corresponding reduction in rewards of course).

 

[Nick_S]

Yeah I think the thing with Career Mode is that unless you are aiming at trying to get as many points as possible then you need to pick a set of Options that place some other challenge in your way. The base game default settings make the game too easy in my opinion.

For myself, I'm splitting the difference. I'm going with unequipped mechs, mech destruction, hard opposition, and slow experience progression, and 4 pieces of salvage. That gives some real challenge, but the last setting means that it's still possible to build up new mechs fairly quickly.

On that note, however, I will say that at the start of my new career mode, I had a mission which was a good example of what ThatGuyMontag (I think) has talked about the ability of BATTLETECH to create it's own stories even without the campaign as a frame. It was early on, I was on my second planet (a 1-skull world with only 1.5+ skull contracts, but one that looked promising enough that I'd happily stopped there after having mapped out a route that went through a couple of worlds). I had my original starting lance with some modifications (mostly dropping missile weapons to add more armor) and my Panther was on the shelf awaiting a weeks worth of repair.

So I drop on a 1.5 skull mission with the Vindicator, Jenner, Spider, and Commando. It's a lunar environment, and my opposition ends up being two light lances (the target and a lance of reinforcements). I've picked an angle of approach that allows me to engage for a couple of rounds before the reinforcements get there but they're quick, so they will catch up to the combat soon. In total there are 1xPanther, 1xJenner, 3xFirestarter, 3xLocust (one of which is a Locust M).

The Vindicator takes most of the fire, and I end up having to eject eventually by which point I had taken out 1xPanther, 1xJenner, 1xFirestarter, and done some damage to the Locust-1M and one of the remaining Firestarters. My other mechs are in fairly good shape except the Commando which had taken a PPC shot in the CT, which is meaningful for a 25-ton mech.

I stop for a minute and ask myself if I should just withdraw from the mission. I know it's going to be a tough fight. But, I negotiated for all salvage, and if I win I know that I'll have enough pieces to assemble a Firestarter which would be very nice.

I decided to fight it out.

I ended up winning, with a fairly good outcome (I lost the Commando pilot after it lost a leg and both Firestarters peppered it with MGs on the next round before I could eject, but neither of the other two mechs took internal damage) but I will never forget the moment of recognizing that the Firestarters were genuinely scary; that both of them had more firepower and more armor than any of my mechs.

That was a very fun and very specific experience. Even slightly later in career I would have had the sense that the Firestarters were dangerous and needed to be handled carefully, but I wouldn't have had the same jolt of, "they will take me apart if I'm not careful."